Poland is one of the most attractive secured lending markets in Central and Eastern Europe: a vibrant SME sector, a well-developed agricultural industry, and a persistent financing gap that traditional banks have been slow to fill. Many small and medium-sized farms still struggle to access flexible financing. That demand is real, and it aligns with LANDE's approach to secured lending.
LANDE entered this market in early 2026 with a straightforward mandate: build an investment environment that is secure, transparent, and legally robust for investors and borrowers alike.
Before launching operations, we conducted extensive legal and market due diligence. Below are the five key pillars that shaped our approach.
The 5 Key Principles Behind Our Poland Launch
- Learning from existing market participants
- Building a team of experienced lending and legal professionals
- Maintaining high collateral and credit assessment standards
- Ensuring all loans are backed by strong, registered collateral
- Adding extra legal protection through enforcement instruments and guarantees
1. Learning from the Market: Experience Before Expansion
Before entering Poland, we took time to deeply understand the local lending landscape.
We studied how established SME and agricultural lenders actually operate in Poland - their structures, their workflows, and where things had gone wrong for them.
✓ Analyzed other SME and agricultural lenders, studied their operational models and legal structures
✓ Identified common challenges and past mistakes
✓ Held consultations and exchanged insights with industry participants
That groundwork gave us two advantages most new market entrants lack going in:
Market readiness
We arrived with a clear picture of how Polish borrowers think, what they need, and which financing structures hold up in practice
Legal preparedness
By studying typical enforcement issues before writing our first agreement, we could build creditor protections into our framework from the start, rather than patching them in after problems emerged.
This allowed us to design our product and legal framework proactively, not reactively.
2. Experienced Professionals and Specialized Legal Support
We attracted professionals with proven track records in SME and agricultural lending. Our Head of Operations, Justyna Puczkowska, brings over 10 years of experience in bank and agro lending and sets the standard for how we approach every loan on the Polish market.
Alongside our internal team, we partnered with external legal advisors specializing in Polish lending law, secured financing, and agro-sector financing. These experts helped structure our loan agreements, validated our collateral frameworks, and ensured full compliance with local legal requirements.
The result: an operation that is both legally sound and built to work efficiently from day one.
3. High Collateral and Credit Assessment Standards
Our collateral approach is deliberately conservative. We work primarily with real estate as collateral, and we keep Loan-to-Value ratios typically below 60%, giving investors a meaningful buffer even in stress scenarios.
We evaluate each borrower across four dimensions: financial performance, equity contribution, business experience, and credit history.
No single metric drives the decision. Instead, we combine financial analysis, qualitative assessment, and hands-on sector knowledge to build a complete picture of each borrower's situation.
This ensures we finance sustainable businesses, not just opportunities
4. Strong Legal Security: Registered Collateral
The majority of loans are secured by hard assets with established and verifiable market value, primarily agricultural land and real estate.
For agricultural land valuation, we rely on official market data published by Statistics Poland (GUS), taking into account regional pricing and land quality classifications.
Building and property valuations are based on independent appraisal reports or assessments prepared by specialized external valuation firms we cooperate with.
The key principle is formal registration. Every piece of collateral is registered, typically as a mortgage, which means legal clarity from day one, established priority rights in any enforcement scenario, and full transparency for investors about what secures their money.
This conservative and standardized approach helps ensure realistic collateral coverage and stronger investor protection.
For a detailed breakdown of how we assess collateral value, see our Collateral Valuation document.
5. Additional Legal Protection: Enforcement & Guarantees
Strong collateral is the foundation. But we go further.
Notarial enforcement under Article 777
Every borrower signs a notarial deed under Article 777 of the Polish Code of Civil Procedure. This is a directly enforceable title, meaning that if issues arise, we can move to enforcement without going through lengthy court proceedings first.
In practice, this significantly reduces recovery time and gives investors a meaningful legal advantage that most lending structures simply don't provide.
Additional guarantees
Where possible, we also require personal or corporate guarantees from additional guarantors. This creates multiple layers of repayment responsibility and ensures borrowers have real skin in the game
Building a Safer Investment Environment
Our entry into Poland carries a clear ambition: raise the standard for secured lending in the region.
By combining deep market research, experienced professionals, conservative risk policies, and strong legal frameworks, we have built a system designed to protect investors, support responsible borrowers, and operate sustainably for the long term
Looking Ahead
Poland is a dynamic market with real depth- particularly in agriculture and SME financing. With the foundations we have built, we are confident LANDE can play a meaningful role here: financing real businesses and offering investors secure, transparent opportunities.
Long-term success in secured lending comes down to a few things done consistently well: disciplined underwriting, legal clarity, conservative risk management, and genuine alignment between investors, borrowers, and the platform. That is how we intend to operate in Poland, for the long term.